Not Just a Garage Sale

Not Just a Garage Sale

On August 2 – 4, Mercy Hospice held a garage sale to raise money for its volunteer program. Putman Realty donated the space in Avondale Plaza to host the sale, sale items were donated, and the fundraiser was planned and staffed by Mercy Hospice volunteers Kim and Alyssa Lieb, Jen Weil and Stan Terhune and Mercy employees Susan Workman, volunteer coordinator of Mercy Hospice, and Julie Holley, LPN, Mercy Homecare.

Over $2,800 was raised and hospice employees were able to share the message of how the program can help both patients and their families. “We talked with individuals interested in our volunteer program and shared how they can help by visiting patients, planning fundraisers and providing office assistance,” Workman says. “For me, the real treasures weren’t the great buys, but the people I was able to talk with and the stories they shared,” she says.

One shopper heard prom dresses were available at the sale. Her husband goes to Kentucky every year for a mission trip, and she said the girls wear sweatshirts to the prom. They were looking for inexpensive prom dresses to take. She bought seven.

“After the sale, we were able to donate five more prom dresses, eight pairs of dress shoes and costume jewelry,” Workman says.

A family who just moved to the area -– and currently lives with a friend – visited the sale. “A young girl went home with clothes, shoes and a purse,” Workman says. “We were able to do the same for another girl. It was fun to watch them try on the shoes and pick the clothes they – and mom – liked.”

A son brought his mother to the sale. He said she had taken care of him and now his mother has Alzheimer’s. It was his turn to take care of her. While at the sale, his mother had an accident. “I asked him if they had to pay for her incontinence products, and he said yes. It just so happened that I had Depend® products, which had been donated, in my car to take to Mercy Hospice,” Workman says. “We gave him four packages.”

A woman, enrolled in Mercy Homecare, just moved to the area in government housing with her two children, and the family was in need of household goods and clothing. “Her Mercy Homecare physical therapist came to the garage sale and picked out items to give her,” Workman says.

“A local church member, who knew a staff person in our office, asked if we would donate to a young mom and her children who were in need,” Workman says. “We asked the mom to come to the sale and tag the items she wanted. After the sale, we were able to donate almost everything that she had tagged.”

Clothes and shoes were also donated to a local church that provides food and clothes for those in need.

A Mercy Hospice volunteer’s 10-year-old friend asked if she could sell lemonade at the garage sale. “At the end of the day, I counted the money to give her,” Workman says. “But she said, ‘No. I want hospice to have it.’”